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1. CAREER: Testing the Performance of Outcome Measures for LGBTQ STEM Students and their Peers

   Hughes, Bryce E. ; MGWatson, Sidrah ( June 2023 , Proceedings of the 2023 ASEE National Conference and Exhibition)

   The purpose of this NSF CAREER project is to explore the participation of LGBTQ students in STEM fields. LGBTQ students leave engineering and other STEM majors and careers at higher rates than their heterosexual, cisgender peers, and the climate within these fields is a contributing factor to this difference in attrition. In order to develop a diverse engineering workforce and adequately prepare the next generation of engineers and other STEM professionals, engineering educators and departments must address inequities such as these to ensure broad participation. This purpose of this poster is to highlight progress toward meeting the first research aim of the overall project, to examine the social networks and related STEM outcomes of LGBTQ students. The project comprises three primary research aims, which also include future work comparing STEM degree completion rates between LGBTQ students and their cisgender, heterosexual peers, and exploring the intersection of STEM discipline-based identity (e.g., engineering identity, science identity) with sexual and gender identity. This project stands to improve our understanding of how to broaden participation in engineering and other STEM fields by pursuing robust research efforts that illuminate the ways sexual and gender identity shape trajectories into, through, and out of STEM. Over the past year of the project, we have accomplished developing and administering a survey to college students nationally. We administered the survey at two universities in Spring 2022 followed by a third in Fall 2022, and administration will conclude at two more in Spring 2023.The survey itself uses an egocentric social network analysis approach to gather data on the characteristics of a subset of students’ social networks, measures of several affective outcomes known to lead to academic persistence, and data on students’ college experiences and personal demographics. For this poster, we present our work testing how well the outcome measures performed in the survey instrument. Overall, our dataset as collected to date includes 404 students who completed the survey. Of these students, over half were women (58.2%), about a quarter were men (28.1%), and 8.9% were nonbinary, genderqueer, or gender nonconforming. In terms of sexual identity, 38.8% of were heterosexual, 30.1% were bisexual or pansexual, 14.4% were gay or lesbian, and 6.5% were asexual. Our survey measured three affective outcomes: sense of belonging in one’s major, commitment to one’s major, and science and engineering identity. Reliability testing and factor analysis demonstrated that our data performed well in replicating the factor structure of our measures, and content validity testing demonstrated these measures related as expected with other variables in the dataset. 

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2. (Re)discovering the Physical Body Online: Strategies and Challenges to Approach Non-Cisgender Identity in Social Virtual Reality

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502082  

   Freeman, Guo ; Maloney, Divine ; Acena, Dane ; Barwulor, Catherine ( April 2022 , Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'22))

   The contemporary understanding of gender continues to highlight the complexity and variety of gender identities beyond a binary dichotomy regarding one’s biological sex assigned at birth. The emergence and popularity of various online social spaces also makes the digital presentation of gender even more sophisticated. In this paper, we use non-cisgender as an umbrella term to describe diverse gender identities that do not match people’s sex assigned at birth, including Transgender, Genderfuid, and Non-binary.We especially explore non-cisgender individuals’ identity practices and their challenges in novel social Virtual Reality (VR) spaces where they can present, express, and experiment their identity in ways that traditional online social spaces cannot provide. We provide one of the first empirical evidence of how social VR platforms may introduce new and novel phenomena and practices of approaching diverse gender identities online. We also contribute to re-conceptualizing technology-supported identity practices by highlighting the role of (re)discovering the physical body online and informing the design of the emerging metaverse for supporting diverse gender identities in the future. 

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3. Embodied disruption: "Sorting out" gender and nonconformity in the doctor's office

   Paine, Emily Allen ( August 2018 , Social science & medicine)

   Among LGBTQ people, those who are gender nonconforming (GNC) may be at heightened risk of both discrimination and underutilization of healthcare—yet little is known about what happens during healthcare encounters to compel GNC individuals to continue or avoid seeking future care. This study qualitatively examines the healthcare experiences of a racially diverse sample of 34 adult LGBTQ cis women, transgender men, and nonbinary individuals in a metropolitan area of the United States who do not conform to dominant biomedical schemas of sex and gender. GNC individuals experience embodied disruption in medical settings when patients are mis/recognized; providers respond to disruption in ways that further distress patients. Broadly, participants report similar experiences across racial and gender identities, but patients manage disruption somewhat differently depending on their embodied positions to gender norms. This study contributes to literature of stress, stigma, and sex, gender, and sexuality within medicine by illuminating how stigmatizing healthcare interactions deter LGBTQ individuals from seeking healthcare. Findings point to the importance of considering both structural factors and embodied visibility in future research addressing how stigma and discrimination manifest within health settings to disadvantage LGBTQ groups. 

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4. The Complexity of Nonbinary Gender Inclusion in Engineering Culture

   Haverkamp, A. ( June 2018 , ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   Gender in engineering is a long-standing source of inquiry, research, outreach, and discussion as inequity in demographics and negative experiences persist in the field. Women consist of just approximately 20% of our engineering undergraduate programs nationally, and roughly 14% of our national professional workforce. Absent from these numbers and research into gender minority experiences are students who lay further on the margins of discussion, awareness, inclusion, and acknowledgement of existence - students who identify as nonbinary or other genders aside from man or woman. This paper presents background literature on gender, gender minority experiences in higher education, nonbinary gender identity, and aims to present points of discussion to facilitate further engagement with a more nuanced understanding of gender in engineering. Gender as a social system is defined by multiplicity and fluidity and does not fit within two unitary and discrete categories. The majority of current gender in engineering scholarship utilizes a conceptualization of gender which does not acknowledge or incorporate more than two gender options, and is rooted in increasingly rejected notions of biological essentialism. Nonbinary and gender nonconforming students, some of which also identify within the transgender population, exist in liminal spaces throughout society and higher education, and continuation of this scholarship tacitly denies their existence by framing gender as intrinsically linked to two biological categories. Engineering professionals, faculty, and students who identify as neither men nor women must be included and our conversation be expanded for academically rigorous investigation into gender dynamics and create inclusive engineering spaces. Conversations around gender neutral bathrooms are just the beginnings of widespread cultural change to support gender expansive engineers. The discipline must re-think our approaches towards gender equity in engineering and the theoretical conceptualization of gender to not only frame its inequity through the sharp underrepresentation of women, but its gender dynamics as experienced by nonbinary and gender nonconforming students. We must continue to make space for marginalized gender identities and gendered experiences. Through reviewing existing literature and integrating my own intimate experiences I seek to discuss preliminary efforts towards nonbinary inclusion in our teaching, professionalization, and language. This paper represents a point of entry for discussing nonbinary inclusion as part of the discipline's continued commitment to cultural change surrounding gender. 

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5. The Complexity of Nonbinary Gender Inclusion in Engineering Culture

   Haverkamp, A. ( June 2018 , ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   Gender in engineering is a long-standing source of inquiry, research, outreach, and discussion as inequity in demographics and negative experiences persist in the field. Women consist of just approximately 20% of our engineering undergraduate programs nationally, and roughly 14% of our national professional workforce. Absent from these numbers and research into gender minority experiences are students who lay further on the margins of discussion, awareness, inclusion, and acknowledgement of existence - students who identify as nonbinary or other genders aside from man or woman. This paper presents background literature on gender, gender minority experiences in higher education, nonbinary gender identity, and aims to present points of discussion to facilitate further engagement with a more nuanced understanding of gender in engineering. Gender as a social system is defined by multiplicity and fluidity and does not fit within two unitary and discrete categories. The majority of current gender in engineering scholarship utilizes a conceptualization of gender which does not acknowledge or incorporate more than two gender options, and is rooted in increasingly rejected notions of biological essentialism. Nonbinary and gender nonconforming students, some of which also identify within the transgender population, exist in liminal spaces throughout society and higher education, and continuation of this scholarship tacitly denies their existence by framing gender as intrinsically linked to two biological categories. Engineering professionals, faculty, and students who identify as neither men nor women must be included and our conversation be expanded for academically rigorous investigation into gender dynamics and create inclusive engineering spaces. Conversations around gender neutral bathrooms are just the beginnings of widespread cultural change to support gender expansive engineers. The discipline must re-think our approaches towards gender equity in engineering and the theoretical conceptualization of gender to not only frame its inequity through the sharp underrepresentation of women, but its gender dynamics as experienced by nonbinary and gender nonconforming students. We must continue to make space for marginalized gender identities and gendered experiences. Through reviewing existing literature and integrating my own intimate experiences I seek to discuss preliminary efforts towards nonbinary inclusion in our teaching, professionalization, and language. This paper represents a point of entry for discussing nonbinary inclusion as part of the discipline's continued commitment to cultural change surrounding gender. 

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